Too Many Cousins

that in a few years I may be dismissing him in a subtly contemptuous paragraph.”
Mr. Tuke looked at him with sardonic amusement.
“I always thought,” he remarked, “that this post mortem publicity was hedged about with conventions.”
“There can be art even in an obituary notice,” Parmiter replied with one of his cynical smiles.
Mr. Tuke shook his head. “You fill me with misgivings. Here you sit, among your prospective victims, waiting your opportunity to damn us with faint praise when we can no longer retaliate.”
“Oh, not all of you,” Parmiter said. “I try to be fair. I may say, indeed, that I have done something to establish or restore a number of reputations. And others can stand on their own legs. Yours for example.”
“I breathe again.”
“You might be surprised, Tuke, to learn how much I know about you. Of course, since I am much the older, I shall, I hope, never be in a position to employ my knowledge in your case. And I can hardly pass my material on to a successor. After my death, my files will be destroyed.”
“Files?” Mr. Tuke commented. “Of course, I suppose you will have acquired a good deal of data. But I thought the newspapers themselves collected that sort of thing.” Panniter shrugged contemptuously. He seemed to be studying his companion.
“Every newspaper has its morgue,” he said. “But I am the expert they call in to fill in the gaps. But besides that, I have built up for myself a unique position. I supply the press with information about persons of whom it has never heard, or has overlooked, or has not considered of sufficient importance to merit a niche in the morgue.”
“How have you yourself acquired this mass of miscellaneous knowledge?” Harvey inquired.
“By assiduous study of the newspapers themselves. I subscribe to almost every sheet published in this country, and, in normal times, to many from abroad. I have filing cabinets full of cuttings, and a system of cross references by which I can turn up any name I want in a few minutes. My memory, I may say, as the result of years of practice, is quite remarkable—if I have ever filed a name I never forget it. Then I have correspondents all over the country, who do any necessary research work, and I undertake quite a lot myself when I am really interested.”
“Not only a system, but an organisation as well. And you talk as though you often were interested.”
The obituarist uncrossed his long legs and leaned forward, the light of enthusiasm in his rather lacklustre eyes.
“My dear fellow,” he said, “it is an absorbing pursuit, as I told you. I do it now for the love of it. Only a hundredth part of the information I unearth can ever be used. But it is often a romance in itself. You read of some death, it reminds you of another, you search back in the files, you add item to item—a bit about this, a bit about that, an advertisement, a will, perhaps—and gradually the whole history of a family is built up like a mosaic over several generations. And very queer reading such histories can be, I assure you, when put together in this way . . . ” Parmiter paused, his eyes under their heavy lids again studying Mr. Tuke’s saturnine features. “I am often tempted,” he went on, “to follow up some of my clues. But I am not an inquiry agent, in the accepted sense. On the other hand, you know, Tuke, you could do with someone like me at the P.P’s office. Or at Scotland Yard. Not that I am for hire. It is merely my hobby, as well as my work. But I am convinced of this—there are crimes and plots that have never been suspected concealed in obituary columns.”
“The idea has not altogether escaped us,” Mr. Tuke said. “There is a branch of G.I. which studies the newspapers.” The other made an impatient gesture. “Oh, I know, I know. But not even Scotland Yard has my system or my memory.” He looked with an abstracted air at the pipe he had been holding for some time. It had long since gone out. Laying it on a table beside him, he gave Harvey one of his half-veiled looks. “I’ll give you an example of the sort of case I have in mind,” he said. “It was only two days ago that a new development caused me to consider it in earnest, and it may, after all, have a perfectly innocent construction. But it will illustrate my argument.”
“I should like to hear it,” Harvey said. “Have a cigar.” Parmiter accepted a Larranaga rather absently, and lighted it with a carelessness that made its donor wince. He appeared to be thoroughly in the grip of his hobby. The pair were sitting in a quiet corner of the lounge, which at seven o’clock in the evening was sparsely occupied. Behind them the August sunshine of double summer time poured slantingly through the tall windows overlooking the Mall.
“Two days ago,” said Parmiter, “I read in a Surrey paper, published weekly in Guildford, the announcement of the death, ‘accidentally’, of Blanche Porteous, who was described as the widow of Cyril Porteous and the daughter of Rutland Shearsby. In the body of the paper was a brief account of the inquest held three days after the fatality. This occurred, by the way, on Bank Holiday Sunday. Mrs. Porteous, who was a teacher of elementary chemistry at a girls’ school—Guildford is full of schools—had somehow swallowed a dose of sodium nitrite at her home, where she had some chemicals. The verdict at the inquiry was ‘accidental death’.”
The obituarist remembered his cigar, drew on it violently, and had a fit of coughing. Mr. Tuke decided that never again would he offer good tobacco to a man so obviously unfitted, to appreciate it.
“No effort of memory,” Parmiter went on when he had recovered, “was required to make me take notice here. Only a week ago